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Israel Belkind, founder of the Bilu movement, proposed the name "Rehovot" (lit. 'wide expanses') based on Genesis 26:22: "And he called the name of it Rehoboth; and he said: 'For now the Lord hath made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land'."[4] The biblical town of Rehoboth is located in the Negev Desert.[5]

Rehovot was established near a site called Khirbat Deiran, which now lies in the center of the built-up area of the city.[6]

Excavations at Khirbat Deiran have revealed signs of habitation in the Hellenic and Roman periods and through the Byzantine period, with a major expansion to about 60 dunams during the early centuries of Islamic rule.[6] Evidence of Jewish and possibly Samaritan occupants during the Roman and Byzantine periods has been found.[7] In 1939, Khirbet Deiran was identified by Klein with Kerem Doron ("vineyard of Doron"), a place mentioned in Talmud Yerushalmi (Peah 7,4), but Fischer considers that there is "no special reason" for this identification,[6] while Kalmin is unsure whether Doron was a place or a person.[8]

The moshava of Rehovot was founded on the coastal plain by Polish Jews seeking to establish a township independent of the Baron Edmond James de Rothschild. The land was purchased by the Menuha Venahala society, an organization in Warsaw that raised funds for Jewish settlement in Eretz Israel.[4]

At the time, all of Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire and the area that became Rehovot, like much of the land in Palestine then, had been settled by Arabs tending animals and living essentially as squatters on land that had been exclusively at their disposition in an economic system where ownership of the land per se had not been a norm. This meant that the land purchase represented a disruption to the livelihoods and lifestyles of those who had viewed it as theirs for generations.[9]

In March 1892, a dispute over pasture rights erupted between the residents of Rehovot and the neighboring village of Zarnuqa, which took two years to resolve. Another dispute broke out with the Suteriya Bedouin tribe, which had been cultivating some of the land as tenant farmers. According to Moshe Smilansky, one of the early settlers of Rehovot, the Bedouins had received compensation for the land, but refused to vacate it. In 1893, they attacked the moshava. Through the intervention of a respected Arab sheikh, a compromise was reached, with the Bedouins receiving an additional sum of money, which they used to dig a well.[10]

In 1890, the region was an uncultivated wasteland with no trees, houses or water.[11] The settlers of Rehovot planted vineyards, almondorchards and citrusgroves, but grappled with agricultural failures, plant diseases, and marketing problems.

The first citrus grove was planted by Zalman Minkov in 1904. Minkov's grove, surrounded by a wall, included a guard house, stables, a packing plant, and an irrigation system in which groundwater was pumped from a large well in the inner courtyard. The well was 23 meters deep, the height of an eight-story building, and over six meters in diameter. The water was channeled via an aqueduct to an irrigation pool, and from there to a network of ditches dug around the bases of the trees.[12]

By 1908, the idea was conceived of settling new Jewish immigrants on the land as agricultural laborers. The Workman's Union (Hapoel Hazair) had taken an interest in Yemenite immigrants who were then settled mostly in Jerusalem and Jaffa, and decided to bring about 300 Yemenites who had arrived in Jaffa and resettle them in the colonies of Rishon-le-Zion and Rehovot.[13] Only a few dozen Yemenite families had joined Rehovot by 1908.[14] They built houses for themselves in a plot given to them at the south end of the town, which became known as Sha'araim.[14] In 1910, Shemu'el Warshawsky, with the secret support of the JNF, was sent to Yemen to recruit more agricultural laborers.[14] Hundreds arrived starting in 1911 and were housed first in a compound one kilometre south of Rehovot and then in a large extension of the Sha'araim quarter.[14]

In 1913, Rehovot became the flashpoint for a dramatic turn in relations among the region's ethnicities: after an itinerant Arab camel driver passing through stole some grapes from a local farm, local Jewish settlers arriving on the scene brutally attacked him, which led to the arrival of Arab reinforcements, then to a skirmish that proved fatal - one death on each side of the gunfire. It is alleged that this was the moment that a previously peaceful co-existence among ethnicities, united under the Ottoman Empire, became overnight an "us vs. them" divisiveness that has prevailed ever since.[9]

In February 1914, Rothschild visited Rehovot during the fourth of his five visits to the Land of Israel.[15]

According to a census conducted in 1922 by the British Mandate authorities, Rehovot had a population of 1,242 inhabitants, consisting of 1,241 Jews and 1 Muslim.,[16] increasing in 1931 census to 3193 inhabitants, in 833 houses.[17] In 1924, the British Army contracted the Palestine Electric Company for wired electric power. The contract allowed the Electric Company to extend the grid beyond the original geographical limits that had been projected by the concession it was given. The high-tension line that exceeded the limits of the original concession ran along some major towns and agricultural settlements, offering extended connections to the Jewish towns of Rishon Le-Zion, Ness Ziona and Rehovot (in spite of their proximity to the high-tension line, the Arab towns of Ramleh and Lydda remained unconnected).[18]

Rehovot mall and municipality

In 1931, the first workers moshav, Kfar Marmorek, was built on lands acquired by the Jewish National Fund in 1926 from the village Zarnuqa, in which ten families evicted from Kinneret in 1931 were resettled to work the land, and later joined by thirty-five other families from Sha'araim. Today, it is a suburb of Rehovot.[19]

The agricultural research station that opened in Rehovot in 1932 became the Department of Agriculture of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1934, Chaim Weizmann established the Sieff Institute, which became the Weizmann Institute of Science. In 1937, Weizmann built his home on the land purchased adjacent to the Sieff Institute. The house later served as the presidential residence after Weizmann became president in 1948. Weizmann and his wife are buried on the grounds of the institute.

On 29 February 1948, the Lehiblew up the Cairo to Haifa train shortly after it left Rehovot, killing 29 British soldiers and injuring 35. Lehi said the bombing was in retaliation for the Ben Yehuda Street bombing a week earlier. The Scotsman reported that both Weizmann's home and the Agricultural Institute were damaged in the explosion, although the site was 1–2 miles [1.6–3 km] away. On 28 March 1948, Arabs attacked a Jewish convoy near Rehovot.[20]

Between 1914 and 1991, the population rose from 955 to 81,000, and the area of the town more than doubled. Parts of Rehovot's suburbs are built on land that before 1948 belonged to the village of Zarnuqa, population 2,620, including 240 Jews in Gibton.[23] In 1995, there were 337,800 people living in the greater Rehovot area. As of 2007[update], the ethnic makeup of the city was 99.8% Jewish. There were 49,600 males and 52,300 females, of whom 31.6% were 19 years of age or younger, 16.1% between the ages of 20 and 29, 18.2% between 30 and 44, 18.2% from 45 to 59, 3.5% from 60 to 64, and 12.3% 65 years of age or older. The population growth rate was 1.8%.[24]

In Rehovot, there are three significant Jewish ethnic minorities: Russian Jews, Yemenite Jews, and Ethiopian Jews, concentrated largely in the Kiryat Moshe and Oshiot areas. There is a growing community of religious anglo speaking people who primarily live in Northern Rehovot around the Weizman Institute of Science.

In 2004, there were 19,794 students and 53 schools in the city: 30 elementary schools with 9,875 students and 29 high schools with 9,919 students.[24] 61.3% of 12th graders graduated with a Bagrut matriculation certificate.

As of 2004[update], there were 41,323 salaried workers and 2,683 self-employed. The mean monthly wage for a salaried worker was ILS 6,732, a real change of −5.2% over the course of the previous year. Salaried males had a mean monthly wage of ILS 8,786 (a real change of −4.8%) versus ILS 4,791 for females (a real change of −5.3%). The mean income for the self-employed was 6,806. There were 1,082 people receiving unemployment benefits and 6,627 people receiving an income guarantee.[24]

The Tamar Science Park, established in 2000, is a high-tech park of 1,000 dunams (1.0 km2) at the northern entrance of the city.[25] The Tamar Science Park adjoins the older Kiryat Weizmann industrial park. Although the entire extended science park is largely conceived as an area of Rehovot, the Kiryat Weizmann part is actually under the municipal boundaries of neighbouring Ness Ziona. Tamar Science Park consists of leading hi-tech and bio-tech companies.

Today Marmorek is the highest-ranked club, playing in Liga Artzit, the third level. Maccabi Sha'arayim play in Liga Bet, the fifth level; Maccabi Rehovot play in Liga Gimel, the sixth and lowest division.

During the 1980s, some local swimmers excelled, thanks to the local Weissgal Center Water Park.

^ abcM. Fischer; I. Taxel; D. Amit (2008). "Rural settlement in the vicinity of Yavneh in the Byzantine period: A religio-archaeological perspective". Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research (350): 7–35.